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Wednesday, 26 October 2016

WFRP'd: The View from the Design Studio

In my last post I began to chronicle the 30th anniversary of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and judging by your response this looks to be a popular series of blog posts. Today, I want to delve into a curious little article published in late '86 in our beloved White Dwarf of old. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the magazine in the dark days of the last century, it ran a series of semi-regular columns called 'Open Box' in which new RPG releases were scrutinised by members of the editoral team.

If you got into Games Workshop in the later part of the 1980s this may seem curious to you, as the magazine I discovered in 1988 ran only in house adverts (mostly). Before Bryan Ansell decided to just focus on GW products, the magazine served as the voice of roleplaying in the UK, and had done so for over ten years by the time this article was published.

Of course, the cynic will no doubt point out that the authors of the Open Box columns were in fact employees of Games Workshop LTD, and this was indeed true, but judging by the Open Box columns I have flicked through, other manufacturer's items seem to have been reviewed quite fairly and the GW bias is slight. Looking back, the influence of GW's first decade as a retailer of fantasy games is still evident in it's waning years.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. This particular issue of Open Box concentrates in 'reviewing' (if such a verb is appropriate) our beloved RPG, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Unlike the material we looked at last post, which set to advertise the product to us screaming fans, this piece seeks to explain a little about the development of the game and contains some interesting nuggets of information the Citadel historian would find interesting.

It is well worth reading. Take a look!

The first paragraph contains an interesting remark and I paraphrase when I state that WFRP was originally intended as a supplement for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Well, I didn't know that it had it's origins there, and always assumed it was begun later. Of course, I know that lots of different hands shaped the game and different projects were merged or adapted to ease it's creation.

The second paragraph goes on to make light of the demise of TSR UK and the establishment of the famous '80s Design Studio. The BIG NAMES of WFRP are ticked off here too. If you are curious about this period of GW's history, then Paul Cockburn's interview we us is well worth reading. The link is here.

In an age before GrimDark the term 'grubby fantasy' seems to have described the background to the game and reference is made to the 'shiny, heroic' style of roleplaying prevalent in many D&D supplements and imitators. If you read on, the link between the 'rot of chaos' and the religious turmoil in Renaissance Europe is made explicit and is one that is now frankly blooming obvious, but has always alluded me. Another reference to the Lustria campaign is made here, and that it would be one of the first releases for WFRP. We all know how that one turned out.

Under the 'Chaos' subheading is evidence enough to trouble GW's lawyers in later years. Frank, unclouded admittance that Chaos and all its terrifying glory is directly inspired by the work of Michael Moorcock.

Both Realms of Chaos (which saw release in two volumes) and Realms of Sorcery (which never saw release, at least until Hogshead did a version years later) get a mention on the second page. It is easy to laugh now at the admission that Realms of Sorcery would see print in 1988 but it is obvious now that a great many projects were planned, even developed but ultimately never saw the light of day.

13 comments:

Great find. Many companies when they launch new stuff have a host of ideas, some which pan out, and many which in reality do not. I don't think there's any room to criticise GW for what they produced for WFRP over the years, Realms of Sorcery did not materialise in their hands, but they did give birth to what is recognised one of the all time great RPG campaigns. One so iconic, that in my gaming circles of the time, it was just referred to as 'The Campaign'.

The release of 'The Enemy Within' campaign alone places WFRP right up there with all the greats. The 'Realms of Chaos' books never bothered me much anyway, as a Role-Player more than a wargamer at the time, they were much more unplayable. In fact, I don't think WFRP as it stood had much to gain from the non-adventure sourcebooks, it was such a complete product in itself.

Roleplaying as chaos champion using the Realm of Chaos books could take you to some very dark places indeed. We tried for a few weeks and it disturbed us. Additionally, my players got bogged down in an endless cycle of conflict in order to chase gifts, but the slow descent into depravity was very dark indeed.

Sounds like a very different game. In the same universe as WFRP to be sure, but would you call it WFRP as such?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Chaos in the Old World in terms or WFRP to my mind is like the Cthulhu Mythos in Call of Cthulhu. If it's not there the game is in no way the same, but to run a game where the players are Deep Ones and Ghouls, or even Cultists, is not to play the same game.

I think I know what you mean. WFRP is a game concerning human(ish) characters in a fantasy world, with the fantastical element stripped back to a minimum. They deal with (mostly) other human characters and adventure just as much as they interact as a group and with other NPCs. My group decided to angle their character's opinions of each other on Red Dwarf. Namely, a group of people who strongly dislike each other being trapped together in an effort to better themselves. Primarily, what most concerned them was the acquisition of wealth/equipment to build a better character - much like real life I suppose!!! (:

Ive never seen such hubris in a GW article in my life. It's as well they had a product to back it up, but i still think a lot of the knocking of D&D unnecessary. I loved that game to bits when i was a nipper. It got me heading onto the path of Oldhammer.

And when you think of how big D&D had been in the earlier '70s and '80s (and the fact that the product helped launch GW as a business) gentle knocking of Dungeons does seem a little ungrateful. But, having played both extensively I would say WFRP is the better game for me at least. So I won't judge them too harshly for their attitude.

Rolling those 3d6 fpr stats was just the most exciting thing ever. We did use early-/mid-80's Citadel minis though 😎. WFRP was class though. I picked up a pretty tidy hardback a few months ago after accidentally buying a Hogshead paperback previously, without the colour plates. Nearly killed me that did. So disappointed.

Ah... The colour plates. We used to dream of using the Dungeon Floor plans for games like we saw in the WD ads. I cut them all out very badly in order to ape the superb pictures that excited us so. My late '80s bedroom, cutting skills and mediocre painted models never fulfilled expectations though.

I never thought that they were just cunningly staged photographs for advertising purposes back then! (;

I've often wondered if the colour magic system that appeared WD 113 and 114 was originally part of the development of Realms of Sorcery rather than developed fro WFB. The first article was almost completely background which could of easily been used for roleplay.

The roots as a supplement to WFB makes total sense if you read the 1st and 2nd editions of that game. WFB1 had a really crude, poorly laid out, and incomplete role playing game as Booklet #3 ( interesting they aped the D&D booklet format when they seem to have had such issues with the game itself..). Interestingly this has the idea that characters have a career instead of a typical D&D class and they include a number of those really benign lower class occupations that make WFRP so iconic. So the roots do go deep.

2nd Edition has a more modest attempt, and I guess by 3rd edition they realized it was better served as a standalone product.